The ability to read signs, omens, entrails,
tea leaves, etc. has been with us for millennia. People with
"The Gift" called "sages", "oracles",
"witches" and "weirdos" have been feared,
respected and invited to all the best parties. If you could tell
the future you had it made, right?

Maybe not. True, sages and seers from time immemorial have been
predicting the future, channeling for the gods and giving advice,
so there must be something to it, you say. Yes, it's true that
this often resulted in a pretty good paycheck, but on the flip
side it often resulted in a burning at the stake. The trick was
to keep it vague, rather like a modern horoscope. Do you ever
pick up the paper and read "You will be hit by the Number
10 bus today; you might want to stock up on aspirin"? Of
course not. Keep it simple, like

"Fortune smiles on those who dare, someone
from your past will breathe oxygen today". Your smarter
sages have known this for years. Witness this classic exchange
between King Philco of the Thracian city-state of Harmonica and
the great sage Persimmon:

King Philco: "What news of Troy? Is this
the day to launch my forces and smite my enemies?"

Persimmon: "When the golden turtle swims the Tigris River
and the thrush sings at midnight,
Agamemnon will feel the sting of a rash!"

Queen Amana: "See? I told you! The minute
I saw his ad at the Acropolis, the one that said 'It's like having
the Oracle at Delphi in your living room!', I knew he was the
right sage for us!"
Personally, I think the gods must have better things to do than
spend their times sending obtuse signs to mortals. I mean, if
your immortal and omnipotent, can't you think of a better way
to communicate your wishes to the lowly than singing thrushes
or golden turtles? A Candygram would be better, even if it came
COD.

The Greek Gods were masters of this. They
played mortal man like a Stradivarius (which hadn't been invented
yet, but it makes for a good example). They screwed around with
the mortal's heads so much that the Greeks wrote works like "The
Iliad" and "The Odyssey" as a record for future
lawsuits. Luckily for the Gods, lawyers hadn't been invented
yet either, which was the major reason it was called The Golden
Age of Civilization.

Now the God of the Old Testament had the right
idea. When God wanted man's attention, you can be sure He didn't
beat around the bush. In fact, a burning bush was about as subtle
as He got. Usually it was plagues of Biblical proportions, edicts
to off the first born, angels with flaming swords, etc. No namby-pamby
thrushes singing for him. Smiting the wicked usually got the
message across, and if man was too dense to figure out God's
plan a plague of locusts usually did the trick. Or a flaming
lawyer.

Nowadays, of course, people are too sophisticated
to believe in omens. Luck, The Psychic Network and Alan Greenspan,
maybe, but not omens.

A good example of this is "Wildfire",
one of those sappy songs from the 1970s about a guy whose lover
used to ride around Nebraska on a horse named, you guessed it,
"Wildfire". Then, one night tragedy struck. As the
song goes:

Oh' they say she died one winter
When there came a killing frost
And the pony she named Wildfire
Busted down its stall
In a blizzard he was lost

By the dark of the moon I planted
But there came an early snow
There's been a hoot'owl howling by my window now
For six nights in a row
She's coming for me' I know
And on Wildfire we're both gonna go

I'll spare you the rest. What I want to know
is, how does the singer draw a connection between "A hoot'owl
howling by my window now for six nights in a row" and the
return of his dead lover and her equally dead horse? And why
are they back? Is Wildfire upset that he was stabled in such
a cheap stall that he could easily kick it down and head out
into the storm? Was the horse heavily insured? And where does
natural selection fit into all this? Maybe I'm being too harsh;
I hear Mr. Ed went the same way.
So, is the singer seeing signs or just being paranoid? It's hard
to say. I don't know about you, but if some spectral being was
coming for me in the night, I'd be worried, too.
But, as Freud said, sometimes a hoot'owl is just a hoot'owl.